POTD #173 Leading Week Returns to Paris

A 250bb deep three bet pot, where things get tricky.

A simplification of the concept of leading out of turn is that a player with a range advantage gets to lead, but it’s not quite that simple. If under the gun raises and the big blind defends, and UTG bets big twice on KT72, the BB will have a range advantage on a three river. The reason for this is because UTG can be bluffing with hands like 98 or A4, and the BB’s worst hand is usually something like AQ or a pair of tens. The BB will have a range advantage because all their hands have showdown value and they never have total air, but the BB can’t do much with their range advantage; leading with K4 because it beats 98 does not accomplish much.

So the other thing to consider is a nuts advantage. Does one player have, if not the nuts, a very strong hand, more than another? A classic example of this is the hand I discussed in the introduction of POTD #171: The BB check-calls T73 and the turn is a 7. They have trips more often than their opponent, so they frequently lead. The key here is that just having a nuts advantage is insufficient. If you have the nuts 3% of the time and your opponent has it 1% of the time, you likely will not lead very often; if you have it 30% and your opponent has it 10%, there will be leading. Leading is usually a combination of having a range advantage and a nuts advantage, but there are always exceptions.

Since every spot is a little different, here are some helpful tips for when an out of position player should lead. If you notice the in position player shuts down vs. OOP checking 100%, it means OOP should be playing leads. In yesterday’s hand when I forced OOP to check on the turn, the three-bettor still bet quite often, which made the EV loss of never leading rather small. If you are leading OOP with a big polar size, ask yourself— what are my bluffs and what better hands am I trying to get to fold? Yesterday we got KK and top pair to fold, so leading checked that box, but generally, if you can’t get better hands to fold, your hand should not lead, even if your range does.

Some other tips: Ask yourself if your opponent’s flop size allows you to rule out specific classes of hands. When your opponent bets small on a two-tone flop, a flush filling should give them plenty of flushes; when they overbet the flop, it should give them fewer flushes. Similarly, when they overbet the flop, a board-pairing middle or low card is likely to be worse for them than when they bet small on the flop.

In yesterday, today and tomorrow’s hands, we will be looking at a spot where leads are commonly used by the solver, but less commonly by humans: three-bet pots. Each action in a poker hand is a piece of information that narrows each player’s range; as ranges winnow, certain absolute statements like “they never should have AA here” start becoming true, and strategies can become less about balance and more about taking advantage of your or your opponent’s narrow range. This is especially the case in three- or four-bet pots, where certain players are over- or under-weighted in certain types of hands, and range advantages switch dramatically from card to card. In today’s hand, we return to EPT Paris, where we look at a hand from the €50,000 where I could have found a donk (or donc or donque) bet, but did not.

EPT Paris 2024 € 50,000 No Limit Hold’em - EPT Super High Roller (Event #14)
(500/1k/1k) (SB/BB/BBA) 250k Starting Stack

I (250k) raise UTG7 with A♠️J♠️, it folds to the HJ (250k) who makes it 9k, it folds back to me who calls.

Flop (20.5k) K♥️Q♥️9♣️: I check, HJ bets 5k, I call.
Turn (30.5k) J♥️: I check, HJ checks.
River (30.5k) 5♣️: I check, HJ checks and I lose to AK.